Category: Personal
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A new international scale for measuring involuntary weeping when cycling
Every morning, without fail, within a minute or two of starting my cycle commute, my eyes start watering, and I look either like I’ve just had some incredibly traumatic news, or I’m having a St John of the Cross moment. I am not alone in this. Many of the threads that address this issue (just google…
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Joining the Tribe of Brompton [Updated – August 2013]
Last October my organisation moved offices from West to Central London, reducing my commute from 9 miles each way to 5. I was running out of excuses not to cycle to work, reduced to arguing that there’s not much room for a bike in a flat with toddlers. Andrea suggested I try out his Brompton. Clever, sure, but…
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Racist toys for kids, part one: The Hot’N’Tot warmer pillow
I spotted this incredibly inappropriately-named children’s product last night in the chain store Butler’s in Islington, London. It’s difficult to know where to begin with just how wrong this is. It’s got to go down as maybe one of the worst clusterfucks in marketing/product naming history. It seems there are other animals in the Hot’N’Tots range – a…
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Persephone Miel
I’m really very saddened to learn of the death of Persephone Miel two weeks ago. There’s little more to say than that, really – it’s a genuine loss, both on a professional and a personal level. I knew Persephone through friends, through her work, and through many lengthy conversations at conferences we both attended both…
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“Super duper supermen!”
A few weeks ago, I downloaded a job-lot of kiddies’ songs from Amazon to keep my babies amused. Uncle Larry unearthed rather an incongruous gem among them – Spike Jones‘ Der Fuehrer’s Face. Despite the initial WTF, and my kids’ indifference to the track, I find myself unable to get this particular – and most…
Sameer Padania 